Macbook Pro did weird blue screen instant-restart

I was working normally on my computer today, using mostly Excel and Firefox, when suddenly the whole screen went bright blue for a second. Then my display came back, but all of the programs I had open were closed, and things started opening like I had just restarted my computer (I have a few programs set to automatically open when I start my computer). I was totally confused but went back to work, and then it happened again 10 minutes later. I shut down my computer for a while after that, and it hasn't happened again, but I'm really worried. What could this be a problem with?

I have a very new (purchased in June) MacBook Pro with 2.53 GHz and 4 GB memory, if that matters at all.

Normally, Apple generic death screens should not be blue, unless you are running Windows on your MB Pro.
If it's all about Mac OS, it's not too much likely, yet you might just have hit F11 key, which hides (minimizes) all windows, or F12 key, which activates dashboard.

Also, -- I'm still talking about Mac OS only -- MBPs have huge problems in Leopard drivers of NVIDIA graphic cards. Suddenly, the whole screen becomes speckled, oftenly greenish (blue?). Updates since 10.5.6 seem to have made that happening less frequently, yet, the logs show the problem is still there.

We mean Apple no harm.

People are lovers, basically. -- Engadget livebloggers at the iPad mini event.

The entire screen definitely went pure blue, no speckled anything, and no windows visible. I know what it looks like when I use Expose - this was definitely not that, and it was far more than a screen thing since all my programs shut down too. I'm going to call the Apple people, I just wanted to see if anyone had heard of this problem.

I've seen this at work with our point-of-sale software, and what's actually happening is that you're computer is logging out of the user account, and immediately logging back in - similar to what intentionally happens when a unibody MacBook Pro switches graphics processors.

From what I've ben able to gather, it's the result of using outdated or incompatible software. What version of Office are you using?

I am having the same problem, but on only one of my macbooks. Everytime i launch excel, i get a blue screen and the computer restarts. It did this when I had Leopard and continues now that I have Snow Leopard. But the very strange thing is that excel works just fine on my other macbook. Both macs are the same, bought at the same time, upgraded to snow leopard at the same time from the family pack, and the Office for Mac was the same disk (also from a multi-license pack). We can't figure on what is going on. Any help is appreciated.

I had the same thing happen with my MBP -- an earlier model from June '07 and it was caused by Kensington Mouseworks. Once I uninstalled that, the problem disappeared. A user on another site referred to it as a kernel panic. No matter what you call it, it was caused by a software incompatibility. You might check some other sites for imcompatibility charts. Macintouch has a good one.

BTW, I replaced the kensginton Mouseworks software with Steermouse 4.0 and that works fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob_06

Is your Office 2008 fully updated?

I don't this problem so farand have 10.6.1 and Office 2008

One thing which may or may not work is re-install the latest update for office 2008 this fixed some issues I had under leopard and may work now.

The blue-screen quick restart is caused by the system logging the user out and immediately back in. A kernel panic would manifest in a dimmed screen with a black box, stating in white text "You must restart your computer, hold down the power button for five seconds" or something along those lines, in about four different languages. In extreme cases, it can also manifest in raw EFI debug text appearing on top of the current screen contents.

Not the case here. After the blue screen, the login window appears so I wasn't getting logged back in. I looked at crash logs and couldn't see what was causing it but I'm no expert.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karelia

The blue-screen quick restart is caused by the system logging the user out and immediately back in. A kernel panic would manifest in a dimmed screen with a black box, stating in white text "You must restart your computer, hold down the power button for five seconds" or something along those lines, in about four different languages. In extreme cases, it can also manifest in raw EFI debug text appearing on top of the current screen contents.

Hi
My MBP did the same blue screen restart running Final Cut Studio 2 with the latest updates. It has happened before and I asked a friend who has the same model as me and he tells me his did this using Red alert and CS4. Another friend told me the same thing happened to him but on an older model. Does anybody knows how to fix this?

Umm...
You know what, I reproduced it under regular Leopard 10.5.8 with just Firefox for Mac OS X. No, no, none of applications, having been running, was unloaded, yet the machine did log me out and then back in via the blue screen.

Everything including Firefox is perfectly up to date. I never had a single MS application installed on my Macs. It never happened to me for more than a decade.

Well, our beloved Apple have delivered something special both into X.5.* and into X.6.* And I believe we can beg for a fix until the Second Coming, nothing will happen, I bet.

We mean Apple no harm.

People are lovers, basically. -- Engadget livebloggers at the iPad mini event.

I have the same issue going on with my MBP, I got it back in Jan '10 and it's the 15" 320GB HDD, 8GB RAM, 3.06Ghz Processor- I'll be doing simple web browsing and I'll suddenly without warning or prompt, the screen will turn blue (like it does when I turn it on) and I guess reboot as if I just turned on the machine. Any projects or applications that I was working on will have been closed out with the exceptions of the ones that I have set up to turn on when I log onto my computer. I tried talking to an Apple Techie, but it seemed that I new more about computers than he did.. (sad -_-'). I paid serious money for this machine and I want it to work exactly (or as close to exactly) the way it's supposed to someone please help!!!!

The issue as described is the WindowServer crashing. And since all of the applications you are likely to think about have mach-port connections to the WindowServer if it crashes they are all doomed. The bright blue background is the default behind the WindowServer. If you really pay attention to the boot process you can see when the WindowServer takes over by this particular shade of blue.

This being said we are not really any closer to figuring out what caused the WindowServer (a generally very reliable bit of software) to crash. A list of suspects (there are more):

1) The copy of the OS in memory got corrupted somehow and this was a once-only event.
2) You have a bad bit of RAM, and the WindowServer, or some bit of information it was using happened to get loaded into it.
3) Some application gave the WindowServer something so bad that it crashed. This could be a one-off, or repeatable. If it is repeatable Apple would probably love to get this as a bug report (with enough details to reproduce). WindowServer is somewhere they put a lot of time into testing.
4) Something is going wrong with the graphics card drivers, this is a little like #3 for most purposes.
5) Something is wrong with your graphics card hardware. The hardware tests disc might be able to diagnose this, but only if it is something that they predicted.
6) Your on-disk copy of MacOS is corrupted, reinstalling would solve this, or booting to another OS and proving that it does not happen would be the only proof.

finally found a forum where folks share my problem. I just bought macbook pro 13" 4gb laptop a few weeks ago...now it randomly turns blue and freezes when in use! this is driving me nuts and only seems to happen when i'm using pages in iwork. everything is updated and it's brand new straight from the apple store. when the screen turns blue i wait but nothing happens, so i hold down the power button and when i turn back on, naturally all my unsaved work has been lost.

i'm thinking of buying the insurance type deal apple's got going on but this seems kinda like a scam. wtf did i just drop over $1k for if the thing doesn't allow me to perform very basic functions?

im suprized to find that this problem still exists. I got a macbook pro this past christmas (Dec. 2010) and at first I had to return it because it had a problem with the CD drive within the first week. Best Buy's warranty warranted a replacement of a brand new macbook pro. So ive had this one since the beginning of January and then, last night, I was doing a paper for college and all i had open was Pages and Safari (with about 3-4 tabs where my research was etc.) All of a sudden, with out any error window, process slowing, or any other indication something bad was about to happen, my entire screen turned light blue and after about 5 seconds the screen came back on and both pages and safari had been closed and it did not save my pages document. so i started again and maybe 10-15 minutes later, it happened again (lost all my progress again). So i decided to restart my macbook. after i restarted, i opened up pages and safari and started writing again. after only 5-7 minutes this blue screen happened again. tonight i am going to take it to bestbuy and see what they can do.

so, officially, thanks apple for getting me a failing grade on a midterm essay. you bastards!

Same Problem here with a MacBook Pro 3,1 2.2 GHz and 4GB Ram. A clean installation of 10.6.7 didn't help. The system crashes (often, not always) when heavy using the machine (Lightroom), when maximizing a Flash video in Safari or any video in VLC- Player. The MPlayer doesn't make such problem.

I went to a Apple Store and got a new Logic Board, because they thought I have the Nvidea GPU- Problem... again! Its my 3rd logic board.

Same Problem here with a MacBook Pro 3,1 2.2 GHz and 4GB Ram. A clean installation of 10.6.7 didn't help. The system crashes (often, not always) when heavy using the machine (Lightroom), when maximizing a Flash video in Safari or any video in VLC- Player. The MPlayer doesn't make such problem.

I went to a Apple Store and got a new Logic Board, because they thought I have the Nvidea GPU- Problem... again! Its my 3rd logic board.

Does anyone have a solution for the problem?

SOLVED:

It was the RAM. Make sure you have Apple specific sticks installed.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION.

I just remove the two RAM sticks I had (total 4gb purchased at Micro Center) at the suggestion of an Apple tech. he told me this might be a hardware problem but since the problem began right around the time I replaced the RAM it more than likely is associated. I did do and took it back to the store and was told by one of their people that is also a tech that the RAM must be for Apple products to work and not just RAM that will fit the slot and boot up. He told me that most brands and particularly Centon must have something showing that it is designated for Mac. I bought another two sticks that says on the package for Mac and so far so good. The blue screen looping which was getting worse and worse (three times this morning in fifteen minutes) has not happened since.

Check your RAM and make sure that any upgrades were made especially for Mac. I think this will do the trick and I will chime in again when i have played with it more.

I don't have a solution but I can tell that the same thing is happening to me with my MBP bought summer 2007. It happens when I open photos in prevue. The first time it was opening several at one time in rapid succession, now it can happen with one just opened. It happened to me last night twice in ten minutes. A couple of weeks ago it was looping, restarting every few seconds. I did seem to find one action that seems to have made it more stable. I unplugged the five external drives I have chained into it and it not only has stopped doing this o far but seems faster too. Any ideas?